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👻Sewall Fright🎃

@stairwaytokevin.bsky.social

8K followers 1.2K following 3.9K posts

Postdoc in evolutionary genomics of polyploids at RBG Kew | science & society | opinions mine Mizzou, Fulbright Belgium, and Michigan State alum. Here because of medicaid, public universities, and pell grants https://kevinabird.github.io/

kevinabird.github.io

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · Mar 28

Really excited to share this new paper with Amanda Agosto-Ramos & @spicybotrytis.bsky.social! We use glucosinolates in the Brassicales as an illustrative model to demonstrate what the improvements in genome quality & phylogenetic coverage are teaching us about the evolution of metabolic innovation.

Phylogenetic and genomic mechanisms shaping glucosinolate innovation

Plants have created an immense diversity of specialized metabolites to optimize fitness within a complex environment. Each plant lineage has created n…

www.sciencedirect.com

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 11h

They should

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 13h

Hell, I’d even like to hear what he has to say about NGE

Reposted by 👻Sewall Fright🎃

ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 16h

every young Republican staffer is a Nazi, it's that simple www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat

Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape.

www.politico.com

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 19h

@sashagusevposts.bsky.social primer is quite good gusevlab.org/projects/hsq/

For general heritability, there’s Moore and Shenk’s heritability fallacy pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27906501/

I have a forthcoming textbook chapter on heritability for evolutionary social sciences that may fit the bill

A downloadable pdf version is available: [ 📄 here ]

gusevlab.org

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Reposted by 👻Sewall Fright🎃

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 1d

Polygenic basis of incipient reproductive isolation in hybridizing populations is revealed by pangenomic and epigenetic divergence https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.11.681778v1

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 21h

A Prelude to Violence

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bioRxivpreprint @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 1d

DupyliCate - mining, classifying, and characterizing gene duplications https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.10.681656v1

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

Once one spends a little time digging into scientific racism it’s almost immediately obvious that none of them are geneticists or biologists. That’s somehow never a red flag for the credulous commentators or journalists

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

There’s definitely a tension between for me between “I told you so” and “At least now there’s stronger evidence I was right from the start.” But why did we need RDR to make the point about environmental confounding in the first place given plant/animal genetics?

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

I think there are a lot interesting questions. Would so much have been invested at the outset if the goal was simply trying to control for relatedness? If there weren’t gadflies would we have gotten past the first round of confounded pop PGS?

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Eric Turkheimer @ent3c.bsky.social · 1d

In 2018, Charles Murray challenged me to a bet: "We will understand IQ genetically—I think most of the picture will have been filled in by 2025—there will still be blanks—but we’ll know basically what’s going on." It's now 2025, and I claim a win. I write about it in The Atlantic.

Your Genes Are Simply Not Enough to Explain How Smart You Are

Seven years ago, I took a bet with Charles Murray about whether we’d basically understand the genetics of intelligence by now.

www.theatlantic.com

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

You’ve still yet to respond to the fact that sources do indeed affect the trustworthiness of claims and can add information to inferences. A general audience podcast is not a useful or dispositive source on the matter. At least engage with actual material on logic and argumentation

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

Under no definition is mere insult or disrespect an ad hominem.

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

That wasn’t an ad hominem!

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

Appeals to authority are a case where the argument is often perfectly fine and the issue isn’t the structure of the argument, it’s disagreement about what makes a genuine authority. People absolutely should scrutinize claims by their source, it’s foolish not to and would lead to worse reasoning

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

Because it’s not a fallacy and doesn’t undermine the argument. I’ve argued why it’s perfectly acceptable reasoning, instead of providing a counter argument you chant your incantation again. Informal fallacies are sometimes-useful heuristics for new students, not ironclad laws of argumentation.

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

You’re getting at something. There’s all kinds of viewpoints in academic departments; people covering distinct areas of active disagreement. But of course there’s no need to represent geocentrism or young earth creationism

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

See also: race science, eugenics, transphobia

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

So weird how there’s a strong relationship between “viewpoint diversity” fetishization and promoting incorrect, harmful beliefs convenient to those in power, isn’t it?

Jonathan Howard @joho.bsky.social · 2d

Here is some material Bari Weiss published regarding Covid.

So when anyone defends her in any way, what they are saying is that real world victims of medical disinformation don’t matter.

It’s all just a game to these pundits.

• Dr. Jay Bhattacharya: The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists. We Fought Back-and Won
• Dr. Jay Bhattacharya: Free Speech on Trial
• Dr. Marty Makary: Dr. Fauci's Legacy
• Drs. Tracy Hoeg and Marty Makary: U.S.
Public Health Agencies Aren't 'Following the Science,'
• Dr. Marty Makary: Officials Say, Universities' Covid Policies Defy Science and Reason,
• Drs. Vinay Prasad, Stefan Baral, Lucy McBride: Bringing Sanity to the Omicron Chaos, Talking To Three Doctors Who Have Been Islands Of Reason In A Sea Of Confusion.
• Dr. Vinay Prasad: Let Djokovic Play
• Dr. Vinay Prasad: We Have a Tripledemic.
Not of Disease, But of Fear,
• Drs. Vinay Prasad and John Mandrola: The Epidemic of #DiedSuddenly
• Dr. Vinay Prasad: How to Save Science From
Covid Politics
• Dr. Vinay Prasad: What RFK Jr. Gets Right— and What He Gets Wrong,
• Dr. Vinay Prasad: Vinay Prasad: Why Was My Talk at a Medical Conference Canceled?
• Dr. Vinay Prasad: Covid Vaccines Shouldn't Be 'Routine' for Kids.

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Jonathan Howard @joho.bsky.social · 2d

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 2d

Why can’t I just find a place to live that’s cool and normal

David Sligar @davidsligar.bsky.social · 3d

Attlee taught Labour to walk, now he watches on as they fly

Reposted by 👻Sewall Fright🎃

lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 2d

Desperate to tap into the zeitgeist of the British people, Starmer finally works out what we need to ban: the cheeky nandos experience.

David Sligar @davidsligar.bsky.social · 3d

Attlee taught Labour to walk, now he watches on as they fly

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 2d

Is it good or bad when your self-proclaimed philosopher god king can’t understand the themes and content of children’s media?

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 2d

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

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Larry Hunter @proflhunter.bsky.social · 3d

What drives test score differences in twins raised apart?

School! Invest in schools!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

IQ differences of identical twins reared apart are significantly influenced by educational differences

Over the last century, several large studies have been published exploring IQ differences amongst monozygotic (MZ) twins reared apart (TRA). By and la…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Reposted by 👻Sewall Fright🎃

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 4d

Effects of deleterious mutations on the fixation of chromosomal inversions on autosomes and sex chromosomes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.10.681595v1

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